1. Technical Field
The invention relates to a method and an apparatus for a telephone service, and particularly relates to a method and an apparatus for a cost-saving telephone service.
2. Related Art
Along with development of wireless communication technology and a development trend of miniaturization of electronic apparatuses, smart phones are greatly popularised, and become a mainstream of current mobile phones. A user can use the smart phone to connect a data network and a telephone service network at any time anywhere. Along with progress and popularisation of the wireless communication technology, although a phone call charge rate of the mobile phones has a declining trend year by year, various telecommunication practitioners still provide various promotional schemes for their long-term clients. However, the charging rate of phone calls between the telecommunication service providers (an inter-network charge rate) is still high. Therefore, various cost-saving communication software and services are vigorously developed, such as “Skype” or “Line”. The common concept among such type of software is to provide a free or low-cost telephone service based on a characteristic that the electronic apparatus or the smart phone is connected to the data network.
Taking the software “Line” as an example, such type of communication software and service could be exemplarily characterized by FIG. 1. In a communication network 100, a smart phone 101 and a smart phone 102 are all installed with such communication software, and are registered to such service. During registration, client devices (e.g., the smart phones) provide telephone numbers thereof to the service. The smart phone 101 and the smart phone 102 are connected to a server 104 providing such communication service through a data network 103 (the Internet). In case that the users of the smart phone 101 and the smart phone 102 know existence of each other and agree a mutual communication there between (add each other as friends), the users of the smart phone 101 and the smart phone 102 can communicate with each other through the data network 103 and the server 104, and the communication method includes a voice service. In this way, even if the smart phone 101 and the smart phone 102 are respectively connected to telephone service networks of different telecommunication service providers, the users of the smart phone 101 or the smart phone 102 can communicate with each other without making an expensive inter-network phone call.
In the aforementioned example, the smart phone 101 and the smart phone 102 are all required to install the same communication software and required to register on the same communication service; otherwise the communication or phone call between the smart phone 101 and the smart phone 102 cannot be implemented. However, the software “Skype” not only provides the communication method of the aforementioned example, but also integrates Type II Telecommunications services, i.e. the user can make cost-saving phone calls as long as the user registers to the communication service. As shown in FIG. 2, in a communication network 200 of FIG. 2, a smart phone 201 registers to a cost-saving telephone service (e.g., Skype). When the smart phone 201 intends to call a mobile phone 202 that does not register on the cost-saving telephone service, where the mobile phone 202 is connected to a telephone service network 205, the smart phone 201 is connected to a server 204A providing such communication service through a data network 203 (the Internet), and the server 204A is connected to a machine room 204B rented by the cost-saving telephone service provider, where the machine room 204B is connected to the telephone service network 205, such that the server 204A can establish a communication connection between the smart phone 201 and the mobile phone 202 through the machine room 204B. Certainly, in such service, the cost-saving telephone service provider still charges a service fee from the user to cover the cost of renting the machine room.
In the current technique, if two terminals of the cost-saving telephone service are not registered to the same cost-saving telephone service, such as the two smart phones to be communicated with each other are not installed with the same communication software, or one terminal of the phone call is not a smart phone, or one terminal of the phone call is a telephone using public switched telephone network, the cost-saving telephone service relies on the machine room rented from the telecommunication service provider by the cost-saving telephone service provider (i.e. a Type II telecommunication service). Such system structure is lack of flexibility and has a high cost, and the service users have to cover the cost of renting the machine room. The current cost-saving telephone technique does not fully integrate resources of the data network and the telephone service networks, and does not fully exploit the characteristic of the modern smart phone capable of simultaneously connecting the data network and the telephone service network.